Apparatus for purifying fuel oil



y 5, 1969 E. M. KNAPP ET AL APPARATUS FOR PURIFY'ING FUEL OIL Filed March 9, 1967 INVENTORS EDWARD M. KNAPP,

STEPHEN J. NESBITT United States Patent 3,442,625 APPARATUS FOR PURIFYIN G FUEL OIL Edward M. Knapp, 951 N. Livingston St., Arlington, Va. 22205, and Stephen J. Nesbitt, 1111 Massachusetts Ave., NW., Washington, D.C. 20005 Filed Mar. 9, 1967, Ser. No. 621,836 Int. Cl. B013 1/00; ClOg 29/00 US. Cl. 23-284 1 Claim ABSTRACT OF THE DISCLOSURE One object of the invention is to remove constituents from the oil which, if they are left in the oils and the oils are burned under todays conditions, destroy the combustion device in which they are used. Many of such constituents are metals, which in the oils are sequestered and relatively harmless, but which on combustion create highly corrosive products.

A second object of the invention is to remove constituents from the oil, which in the process of combustion are converted to pollutants in the atmosphere. In the future oils containing such constituents are likely to be banned as causing inadmissable pollution in the atmosphere. An example of such a constituent is sulphur, and the point is to remove such constituents from the oils before they are marketed for combustion.

This invention deals with a method for such processing of oils, and with apparatus particularly adapted to that method as taught in the present invention and intimately interwoven therewith. The patentable art in the present invention lies in a combination of the art taught in US. Patent No. 3,261,762, issued July 19, 1966 to Edward M. Knapp, one of the two applicants in the present invention with a part of the art taught in copending application filed Apr. 1, 1966, Ser. No. 539,573, now abandoned by the same Edward M. Knapp, the art so taught to be modified and combined with new and novel apparatus and method specified and claimed in the present application. The combination in conjunction with the modification adapts the principle of the previous inventions to the technology of refining of Oils as done On a large scale, a result not obtainable by the art taught in the issued patent and the copending application. The present application is, therefore, not a continuation in part application but instead is an improvement upon the previous invention and extends the application of the art to new subject matter.

Thus, the present invention adapts to a specialized use the apparatus disclosed in the drawings of issued Patent No. 3,261,762, the same consisting of a conical structure within which there is a second conical structure, said second cone to be foraminous in nature. Issued Patent 3,261,762 also includes a detachable receptacle, which in the present invention is completely reconfigured as to structure, but the function of which remains in the invention. With this is combined, by reference, a similar apparatus, which in the first of three configurations disclosed in copending application No. 539,573 omits both the second foraminous cone and the small conical detachable receptacle.

The present invention uses the method of introducing the distillable fuel, in the preferred case a very heavy oil, along with water into apparatus resembling that disclosed in the patent materials just described. The apparatus provides for the generation of a fluid vortex in the distillable material, all of it contained in a very hot environment. Heat transferred from the environment into the distillable material brings about a partial decomposition. Such a partial decomposition removes certain adverse constituents but continues to produce a liquid fuel product. This differs from the result obtained pursuant to the preceding applications.

In the preceding applications the apparatus is placed in the full exhaust heat of a specific combustion device and transforms a liquid fuel into a gaseous (not vaporous) fuel of a distinctly simpler chemical composition than the liquid fuel fed to the device. The type of liquid fuel here is unrestricted, but favors the use of the lighter fuels. The extremely high temperatures obtained in the full and close-in exhaust of an combustion device accomplish the complete decomposition of the fuel by a cracking process into an ideal gas type of fuel, the scavenging function required by the stoichiometrics of a complete decomposition being provided by the introduction along with the liquid fuel of a perfectly stoichiometric amount of water. The excess carbon produced by the cracking is its own catalyst at the temperatures present to decompose the water into hydrogen and oxygen which in turn combine with the excess carbon to increase the generation of suitable fuel gases which are then conducted to the combustion area in the combustion device.

The present invention modifies the method just described for the purpose of applying it to the bulk reforming of heavy fuels such as those produced in a petroleum refinery. The modifications include two things: (1) Instead of the full high temperature consonant with the combustion device exhaust it uses a lower temperature, one just adequate to satisfy the thermodynamics of a partial cracking operation as opposed to the total decomposition called for in the previous applications; (2) the amount of water to be introduced with the fuel for the scavenging is less than stoichiometric and therefore unsaturate chemical bonds remain and these recombine under the conditions of this system to form liquids rather than gases.

An example of the use to which the present invention is adapted is that of the petroleum refinery in which the raw material is crude petroleum containing substantial amounts of metals in porphyrin type structures, the metals concentrated by the processes of natural formation of petroleum from the vital processes of marine animal matter. Prominent among such metals is vanadium in the quadrivalent state. The petroleum refinery breaks up crude oil by a variety of processes all well known in the art, producing a long series of products from the unsaturate gases for petrochemicals, gasolines, naphthas, kerosene, diesel oils, lubricating oils, and home fuel oils. The processes of the refinery are manipulated in order to increase the production of products with a bulk market such as gasoline, and because of popular demand the consumer products involved are specifically desulphurized while the refinery processes by their nature concentrate the metals and related items in what is left in the process as the materials remaining in the bottoms stream. This bottoms stream finally emerges as a terminal product, a heavy almost viscous material known as residual fuel oil. This oil is good for nothing but the production of energy by combustion, and it has been used for this purpose without any thought of the results. The results of the standard combustion of fuel oil are the release to the atmosphere of highly unacceptable amounts of sulphur in the form of sulphur dioxide while the metals in cluding vanadium create highly corrosive compounds. The present invention provides a method by which the petroleum refinery can remove both the sulphur and the metals before the residual oil is put on the market and thus market a fuel oil which will meet the highest possible governmental standards.

It is understood by the applicants that patent applications do not deal with the use of the invention and that function is not in any sense patentable. Patents are restricted to the method and apparatus by which a given technology can be accomplished. This application is no exception to this, but the foregoing statement dealing with function has been included to set the technology of the invention in perspective and to demonstrate its claim of novelty.

The method of the present invention consists of subjecting a fuel intimately mixed with water to the action of moderate heat to accomplish a partial cracking reformation. The apparatus particularly adapted to this method and intimately interwoven therewith consists of:

(l) A large metallic cone set on a square base having the same diameter as the cone it supports.

(2) Inside the first cone is a separate foraminous cone, there being more open area on the surface of this cone than there is closed sheet material.

(3) Outside the first cone is a second solid cone, truncated at the top where it communicates with an exhaust stack, this cone also being supported by the square base.

(4) Forarninous cone 2 has a solid bottom which supports at one side a curved baffle which connects the bottom and the sides of cone 2, the cone and its solid bottom being supported by a skirt which extends into the space in the square base of cones 1 and 3, the skirt being supported on the square base by struts appropriately spaced.

(5) In the lower portion of the space between cones 1 and 3 is a gas burner in the shape of a closed ring, supplied with waste gas from the present process and with air for combustion through a premixing valve outside the presently patented structure and not shown.

(6) A conduit for the removal of liquid and gaseous products of reformation enters the square base at a point slightly below the solid circular bottom of the foraminous cone, and passes upward into that cone through the center of the circular solid bottom, this conduit comprising a vortex tube.

(7) Fuel mixed with water is injected parallel to the solid bottom of the foraminous cone and tangential to the circular perimeter thereof.

(8) Particulate matter reformed out of the fuel is collected first on the inner surface of cone 1 and then in a removable container inserted into the square base of cones 1 and 3, from whence it can be removed at will.

(9) Air in excess of stoichiometric is introduced through the square base below the ring shaped burner, and additional air is introduced tangentially to cones 1 and 3 at a point above the ring shaped burner, the purpose of this arrangement being to create a mixed stream of products of combustion and excess air sweeping helically around the outer surface of cone 1 and in the space between cones 1 and 3, this stream to finally pass off through the exhaust stack to which this space communicates.

Residual fuel oil or other heavy liquid fuel, mixed with water in a mixing device outside the patentable invention and not shown in this application is introduced to the insides of cones 2 and 1, tangential to the bottom of cone 2, and is forced by the baffle to form a vortex largely within cone 2, with the reformed product discharged through the conduit central to the solid bottom of cone 2. The injection pipe for this is common to the fuel and the water at all points within the patentable art. Under the temperature conditions present within the cones a primary cracking operation takes place, freeing metallic elements and sulphur in a reducing atmosphere in which the metallic elements and the sulphur combine with each other and with some of the carbon present as a result of the cracking operation. The compounds produced are particulate and are caused by inertia in a vortex to pass through foraminous cone 2 and impinge on the heated inner surface of cone 1, While the fluid materials which are liquids and gases tend to remain within the space delineated by cone 2 and can be collected separately from the particulate materials which pass through the communicating space into a container located in the base of the apparatus. At stated times the container can be removed by means known to the art and a second container substituted therefor. The fluids which pass from the apparatus through the vortex tube are pumped to a cooling apparatus, which may be one of many types well known in the prior art and not covered in the present application.

Having described the present invention we further define it by means of the drawings, as follows: FIGURE 1 is a vertical cross section of the apparatus. FIGURE 2 is a lateral cross section taken on line 22 of FIGURE 1. FIGURE 3 is a lateral cross section taken on line 33 of FIGURE 1. FIGURE 4 is a lateral cross section taken on line 4-4 of FIGURE 1. Reforming cone 1 has inside it foraminous cone 2 while outside of cone 1 is truncated cone 3 which communicates with exhaust stack 11. Foraminous cone 2 has a solid bottom 4 which supports a curved baffle 5. In the bottom of the space between comes 1 and 3 is a ring shaped burner 6. Vortex tubes for the discharge of reformed fuel 7 enters from the side of base 9 and bends to enter foraminous cone 2 through the center of bottom 5. Cone 2 and solid bottom 4 are supported by skirt 8 which is supported by base denoted 16 in its upper portion as to the inside and by portions 9 and 15 on the outside by appropriate struts not numbered but shown in drawings. Walls of removable container 10 are shown in the relaxed position which applies d-uring removal of the container. During operation of the device walls 10 would be shoved up against skirt 16. Injection tube for commingled oily fuel and water is denoted 12 on the outer part and 14 at the nozzle portion of the same unit. The injection of air in excess of stoichiornetric below the burner 6 is not shown in order to clarify the drawing, but tangential air tube or tubes 13 is shown. As is normal FIGURES 2, 3, and 4 show only a limited number of the numbers which have been described for FIGURE 1. In FIGURE 2, cones 1, 2, and 3 are shown along with the multiplicity of air injection tubes 13. In FIGURE 3 where the apparatus is shown a little farther down, cones 1, 2, and 3 are shown, along with the vertical section of egress conduit 7, part of which is in phantom lines, injection nozzle 14 and curved bafile 5 which forms the vortex in the distilable fuel. In FIGURE 4, which shows the square base of the apparatus, egress conduit 7 is shown without the phantom lines, a portion of the injection tube for oil and water is shown, 12, with the three skirts within the base, 9 the outer skirt, 16 the middle skirt, and 8 the inner skirt are shown. The only new number is 17, denoting the square base itself.

It will be obvious to those skilled in the art that this invention may be modified in many minor ways without departing from the art disclosed and taught in the present specification. The applicants claim the right to introduce such minor amendments and changes of engineering design in the construction of apparatus pursuant to this specification with the stipulation that the basic method will be adhered to without change.

Having thus explained our invention, we claim:

1. Apparatus consisting of a conical structure of sheet metal enclosing a second conical structure of foraminous metal, said second conical structure having a solid base, said first conical structure being enclosed by a third conical structure of sheet metal, said third conical structure enclosing a space communicating with a stack for the discharge of products of combustion, a ring shaped gaseous fuel burner located in the lower portion of the space enclosed by the third conical structure, said burner being supplied with air in excess of stoichiornetric requirements by jets mounted tangentially to the third conical structure, fuel commingled with water to be injected by a nozzle tangential to the base of the second conical struc ture, a baffle so mounted on the base of the second conical structure as to cause a vortex to be created, a vortex tube appropriately mounted, all of the above supported by a base containig a detachable container.

References Cited UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,789,083 4/1957 Hardy 208251 3,213,015 10/1965 Atkinson et a1. 208-106 3,261,762 7/1966 Knapp 196-115 HERBERT LEVINE, Primary Examiner.

US. Cl. X.R. 

